Better Access to Inspection Records

Hello and welcome to Bite Size Electric, the podcast where we break down the biggest challenges and best practices shaping the future of electric networks, one bite at a time. Welcome back to Bite Size Electric. We're rolling into episode two of our series on transmission inspections. Today, we're talking about a pain point we all hear all the time. How tough it can be to pull up the past inspection records and how to make sense of current reports. I'm joined again by Amy Beasley, Senior Product Owner for Utilities at IQGeo. Amy, thanks for joining again. Good to be back, Jeff. I want to start with end-to-end inspection records. From what's happened before a new inspection to how new inspections are reported, maybe you can get us started by talking about what kind of data an inspector in the field needs to see at the beginning of the process. Certainly. When an inspector is looking at a structure, perhaps for the first time, what they need to understand is what was noted previously by the inspector that had been there before. Not all inspections are on an annual basis. They need to be able to look up the previous inspection that occurred there, see the notes, and any other defects that were recorded at that time. If there are present defects or there's new defects for them to record, they need a simple interface to fill in that information that the back office needs. And they also need to keep an eye on whether or not any of those defects have gotten worse over time, in which case there might need to be a higher priority or a faster response time to correct that particular type of defect. And what they want from IQGeo is to be able to access all of this from a single interface where they can see both the information about the previous inspection, the information about the structure that's in front of them to confirm that that data is also accurate, such as poll stamp date and that this is the right poll serial number. And then as well, ensuring that the map is visible and that the map is reflecting what they're seeing. So the person that comes out to do the next set of corrections are being sent to the right place. So I would say that's kind of the end to end process before they move on to the next poll or inspectable item. Once they've completed an inspection, how do they generally report that information? Inspectors in the field will often perform a series of inspections in a row. So they might have a particular line that they're trying to review in a day or just a segment of a line. Once they've completed each individual inspection, they would batch that change up and then report it back to the office, whether they're a contractor, external contractor or a member of the company. They generally rely on ad hoc CSV exports or SFTP batching tools or separate reporting tools to get the information back. So there is a time gap between when the inspection has been performed in the field and when the back office is able to perform analysis and understand if any additional work needs to be dispatched to correct issues or even to confirm their progress of the inspection season. I know many of these utilities have corporate reporting environments like Power BI. How do updates through IQ Geo application integrate with these? Our customers on the cloud hosted environments are able to use the IQ Geo data warehouse. And with the IQ Geo data warehouse that can be connected to Power BI, Tableau or any other corporate reporting tool to directly pull and generate reports off of the IQ Geo database tables. There are also API endpoints provided if a customer would like to do direct querying of the database for customer reporting. It seems like this kind of data access across the inspection website will really streamline the process. Thanks again, Amy. We'll see everyone on episode three. We'll see you next time.